Over the years, it has been standard practice to display merchandise or items by the means of a so-called slatwall or slotwall panels. The slatwalls are generally comprised of profile units which are spaced in a parallel relationship and form horizontal grooves between the adjacent profiles. These horizontal grooves are adapted to receive slotwall hardware, or some other supporting means, to which merchandise is either placed on or hung from, for display.
A problem with this conventional type slatwall is the undesirable appearance of continuous grooves spanning the entire display. Merchants generally only utilize several of the grooves to display their merchandise. Thus, the remaining grooves are left visible to consumers. These visible grooves are unattractive. Accordingly, there has been numerous attempts to provide either a cover for the unused grooves or a blank face structure to occupy the space between the used grooves. Examples are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,825,601, issued May 2, 1989; U.S. Pat. No. 4,785,946, issued Nov. 22, 1988; U.S. Pat. No. 5,390,462, issued Feb. 21, 1995; U.S. Pat. No. 5,241,796, issued Sep. 7, 1993; U.S. Pat. No. 5,224,610, issued Jul. 6, 1993. However, these attempts have failed to provide a cover or a blank face that is reinforced to prevent the face from breaking upon the application of a force pushing against the face.
Additionally, it is desired to have a display wall which is light-weight, to reduce the support necessary to hold the wall and to reduce costs. Examples of attempts to reduce the weight of panel type structures, namely doors, can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 3,252,259, issued May 24, 1966 and U.S. Pat. No. 2,824,630, issued Feb. 25, 1958.
Other slatwall displays as well as other display systems can been seen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,944,416, issued Jul. 31, 1990; U.S. Pat. No. 4,629,076, issued Dec. 16, 1986; U.S. Pat. No. 5,148,925, issued Sep. 22, 1992; and, U.S. Pat. No. 394,144, issued Dec. 4, 1888.
All of these numerous attempts have failed to provide a lightweight display wall with a reinforced face panel to obviate unused grooves, which is also inexpensive to manufacture, appealing to the eye of the consumer and which allows flexibility of groove arrangement for the merchant.